


Under the Sun

by Argyle



Category: Good Omens
Genre: M/M, Tulips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-22
Updated: 2005-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-11 20:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12942702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: Upbringing is everything.





	Under the Sun

By all accounts, the tulip bulb appears quite ordinarily plain when held in the palm of one’s hand. Its outer-layers of parchment-thin membrane are at best a dried sort of earthly amber color, at worst a dull brown, and when one buries it in the first stretches of autumn, there comes only the hope that enough moisture will reach it that it may sprout in the spring. The leaves are spindling and prone to tiny dots of blight; the veins occupy the breadth of a hair.

The tulip’s bud is chaste and sober, but when it flings open its petals, it glows with the unbridled laughter of the sky.

\------------------

At an inn by the roof of the world, two man-shaped beings drank wine and stared after the sunset. Winter was wont to linger there, though even as snow clung to the foothills in great glistening veils, the ground was dappled with tight, silver-backed shoots. The early-risers had already begun to bloom, and the innkeeper collected them; they sat in a painted vase on the ledge above the hearth. Silken tendrils of hashish smoke and cedar curled about the petals, and the spit and crackle of the grate voiced their history.

A heavy chair scraped against the floor; fingertips thrummed on a teak tabletop.

“Get on with it.”

“It’s... oh.” Aziraphale dashed his tongue across his lips, glanced into his goblet, and smiled. “Liquorice, I believe.”

Crowley shook his head. “Not liquorice.”

“Cloves?”

“No.”

“And you’re sure it’s not liquorice?”

“You’re making this harder than it ought to be, angel.”

“I’m just evaluating my options,” Aziraphale said, listening to the drag of his own voice. No; no doubt about it. He had determined some minutes ago that his drink had been laced with any number of spices, but it became more difficult to identify them with each successive sip. The wine was warm, and not without a certain hazy sweetness; it traced a path across his palate and down his throat, settling in his belly with the gilded charm of a lyre. He motioned for Crowley to refill his glass.

“It isn’t bad, really,” Crowley said between lingering gulps from his own, “for a local vintage.” A dribble of wine drifted down his lower lip, dangling as a ruby droplet from his pale chin.

The sight was oddly unsettling. It filled Aziraphale with a feeling that wasn’t dread, or not entirely dread; he felt obligated to intervene. “You’ve a bit of--” he reached forward and dashed it away with the tip of his finger “--there we are.”

“What’s the big idea?” Crowley grumbled, swatting at Aziraphale’s hand.

“Not my idea,” Aziraphale said lightly. He raised his half-full goblet. “Merely the wine.”

“ _Likely_ ,” Crowley said. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Given up, have we?”

“Oh. Just a moment.” Aziraphale paused to loosen the fastenings of his cloak, inwardly lamenting the throbbing conduits of his clouded head. This was precisely the manner of thing which demanded the use of his full range of senses, and the proverbial sundial was merrily casting its shadow across the hours.

Soon the inn would be shrouded by darkness; the shrill-throated wind sought out its meager defenses, and only the borrowed anticipation of daylight might appease its voice.

The cloak lay on the floor in a woolen pool.

Aziraphale rested his chin upon his hand and started a small vortex in his glass.

Civilized creatures such as grapes, he thought, oughtn’t to be so elusive about naming their bedfellows, and any self-respecting sort of honey would have come right out and deemed itself present. Orange rinds and cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg were more cordially trim on the tongue. He had already inquired after caraway seeds. Aziraphale frowned determinedly. “Is it pepper?”

“ _Pepper?_ ”

“It was only that, well, for a moment--”

Crowley was positively grinning. “Of _course_ it’s _pepper_.”

“It is?” Aziraphale felt his stomach clench.

“No.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said again, simply and shortly, and finished his wine. His cheeks were flushed. For the first time since they sat down together some hours before, he wondered whether sobering up might not be the best course of action. Crowley was still smiling; the wind yet howled.

They sat in silence for a moment before Crowley raised a hand to summon the innkeeper.

“Two savory pies,” he said, carefully, and then after glancing to Aziraphale: “Do you want anything?”

Aziraphale sighed. “Carciofi alla Giudia, I suppose.” A pause. “Er. Savory pie, it is.”

“You will like it, my friend.” The innkeeper leered down at them before placing the rough, soiled mitt of his hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. He stank of cabbage and cinders, and his fingernails were blackened with ash and aged injury. “It is made of the finest ingredients,” he said. “The goats I raised myself, on mountain herbs and draughts of the sweetest water. They were like children to me.”

“Quite,” Aziraphale said, trying not to wrinkle his nose. “I’m sure it will be lovely.”

“Yes, yes. You have raised goats?”

Crowley arched a brow. “Only the finest goats in the land,” he said.

“You have goats now?”

“Countless goats.”

“ _Crowley_.”

“Good.” The innkeeper reached into his tunic and withdrew a parcel of coarse brown linen, set it to the table, and unfolded it with the utmost care. “We will trade.”

“Crowley, my dear,” Aziraphale began, but paused as he saw the clump of root and leaf: the bulb was no bigger than the ball of his thumb, and bits of dried earth clung to its surface. A delicate, dapper streak of the freshest green had poked through the top as though it anticipated the spring snowmelt to occur at any moment. “Um. What is it?”

The innkeeper pointed to the vase by their side. “You like them,” he boomed.

It wasn’t a question, but Aziraphale had to admit: he _did_ like them. Who wouldn’t have done? The flowers were thin-waisted and thin-petaled, white feathered with scarlet and scarlet kissed with white. A fine layer of down marked where each sturdy stem met its bloom, and the bristled sheen was warm and clear in the half-light.

Yes, he liked them, and he smiled to see the intent, appraising knit of Crowley’s brow.

“We will trade,” the innkeeper continued. “Fifteen wild bulbs for fifteen goats, yes?”

“Fifteen goats?” Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, who was making a show of not meeting his eye. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but we haven’t--”

“Any idea how a simple _flower_ could be worth so much,” Crowley finished pointedly. “They don’t even have a scent.”

“It is very subtle, no?” The innkeeper smiled. “They are worth their weight in gold or jewels, my friend. That is why they grow all over the hillside. The land here is very rich. You will breed them like you breed your goats, with care and sympathy, and they will bring you happiness.” He placed the bulb in Aziraphale’s palm, and glanced between them confidingly. “Much happiness. I will get your pies.”

After he had gone, Aziraphale said, “Goats? You’ve not been within twenty farthings of a goat in centuries.”

“No, it’s been a thousand years, at least.”

“Don’t let’s forget Peru, please, and that _charming_ village in the clouds.”

“Those were llamas,” Crowley said, matter-of-factly.

“What d’you mean?”

“Great long necks, llamas.” Crowley gestured expansively, and almost upset his goblet. “Eyes like coal, ears like a hare, teeth like a decrepit shark, but nice thick wool, you know? The natives really ought to make jumpers out of it: dyed jumpers with little sewn llamas on. They’re hell-beasts through-and-through.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale nodded, appeased, but after a moment he countered, “And what’s all this about trading your goats -- _nonexistent_ goats, I might mention -- for flower bulbs?”

“Who said anything about trading?”

“I cannot allow you to get away with this, you realize.”

“Get away with what?” Crowley snorted. “I’ve not even _done_ anything.”

“Please, my dear boy. Not so loud.”

Crowley sighed, and said with slow articulation, “If a person makes the conscious decision to believe certain things about me, I’m under no obligation to stop him.”

“But it does seem a bit, well, _selfish_ , don’t you think?” Aziraphale entreated. They had been over this before, he was certain. He maneuvered his chair closer to the table, and stretched his palms flat across it. “Or don’t you?”

“I’ve the capacity to be rather selfish, you’ll find.” Crowley took up his spoon and eyed the innkeeper. “I wonder what’s taking so long,” he said, musingly.

“Don’t be temperamental. I’m sure the poor man is doing his best. Running an inn in the middle of nowhere can’t be easy, not least of all because every barbarian hoard _du jour_ is so keen on sacking even the most rough of the quaint little locales it comes upon.” Aziraphale smiled as a sudden thought occurred to him, and he took a sip of his wine. “Ah. It’s belladonna, isn’t it?”

Crowley grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”

\------------------

“How about a date?” Crowley asked after Aziraphale had caught his breath. “We’re not in any hurry.” He held forth a small leather pouch; its silk-threaded seams bulged against the tugging heft of the ripe, ruddy fruit.

Aziraphale nodded and took one. “Thank you,” he said, biting into it gratefully. “But you’re certain we’re not running late? I should rather hate to upset the Sultan now he’s been so _excruciatingly_ kind as to grant us an audience at his fête.”

“Certainly I’m certain. And besides, it’s only for a bunch of bloody plants. You’d think _they’d_ at least have more patience that your average soldier of fortune or bureaucratic official, and the flowers _still_ haven’t got any scent to them.”

“Oh, but you do realize how seriously they take their tulips here, and one must admit that scents really are such ephemeral attributes. It’s not every day a new sort of blossom is unveiled. Even _you_ can’t deny the outcome of that kind of devoted workmanship.”

Crowley shrugged and plucked a pit from the tip of his tongue, dropping it onto the dusty street as with a delicate sleight of hand. The bustling pace of the open-air market had begun to wane in the later hours of the day, and vendors piled their carts and barrows with unsold wares. Bells rang out through the avenues; hooves clip-clopped over cobbled alleyways. He cleared his throat. “All I know is that the invitation wasn’t bashful about making clear there would be a sizable banquet.”

“Really, my dear,” Aziraphale tut-tutted, adjusting the brocade collar and fluid fall of his robes as they walked. “There’s more to existence than one’s next meal, surely.”

“You obviously haven’t tried the most exalted supreme soufflé surprise,” Crowley said offhandedly. “Best in the Golden Horn.”

“Oh? What’s the surprise?”

Crowley looked Aziraphale in the eye, a reckless smile playing about the corners of his lips. “You’ll see.”

By now they were nearing the palace, and a sizable crowd of onlookers and urchins was amassed outside the great, ornately tiled gates. Crowley had to do little more than flash his most winning smile and they were ushered over the threshold by a brawny, lavishly liveried janissary. Vermillion petals were tucked in the careful curve of his turban, and his royal sash was dotted with jewels.

“Shall I summon a servant to lead you through the grounds, sirs?” he asked. “Late arrivals such as yourselves have often been known to become... lost. It is _most_ unfortunate.”

Aziraphale shot Crowley a sidelong glance.

“No, no. My associate and I are quite familiar with the palace,” Crowley replied, his voice scarcely betraying the simple fact which was all too apparent to Aziraphale: neither of them had yet ventured through this labyrinth of spindling, hyacinth-laced paths, or at least never by the Sultan’s direct decree. It was said that he employed hundreds of skilled gardeners all through the year to attend to his pleasure groves, and had recently procured one-hundred thousand tulip bulbs from the Levant that all the spirits of the hereafter might occupy themselves with the vast rapture of his avenues. Aziraphale thought it a rather nice gesture: extravagant, certainly, but nice.

“Very well.” With a swift, sudden bow, the janissary turned back to the gate.

“Charming fellow,” Aziraphale said when they were out of earshot, but if Crowley replied, he did not notice. The extensive grounds unfolded before them like a map to another world, and as he surveyed them, he could not help but feel a certain sanctimonious spark in his pulse.

There were numerous fountains, all grander and more bountiful than the one which stood before it: torrents and sheets and trickles of water fell forth from wide-mouthed beasts and broad-backed botanicals, and round each base were carved a hundred tulips. The surface of every pool was cast scarlet in the late-afternoon sunlight, and each consecutive splash seemed wrought with spun silver; their murmur, echoing gently from the paneled corners of the high ceiling, bespoke prosperity and the breadth of an empire’s gaze.

Canaries and birds of paradise called out from atop their precarious perches within gilded cages, and a dozen or more wide-eyed gardeners buzzed between great vases of Persian lilies and roses, colchicum and saffron crocus. The air was hung with the scent of spiced meats and sugared pomegranate seeds: culled sandalwood, white musk, and all other things dark, dangerous, and dreamy.

“Ostentatious, if you ask me,” Crowley said.

“Mm.” Aziraphale had to raise his voice to be heard above the set of golden chimes which marked minutes before the banquet’s commencement. “And what shall we do now we’ve arrived?”

“Wait, I suppose.” Crowley looked about distractedly, clasping his hands behind his back and before his belly.

They were not obliged to wait for long, for the Sultan soon parted the merry crowd to the pitch of pipes and sweetly-strung harps. There was a gleam in his eye as he ceremoniously presented the _Sahra-i Lale_ , a billowing debutante bloom he had dubbed Fortune of Time. Its petals, dagger-thin and taut with luscious ferocity, were utterly perfect and pure of hue.

The crowd was driven to applause.

A poet ate a plum and recited a sequence of couplets in honor of the hour.

After the banquet, hundreds of carefully clipped tulips were aligned in the temple as an offering to Allah, and Crowley and Aziraphale stood beneath a palm, sipping sweet elixirs from long-necked goblets.

“You ought to have warned me, my dear. That’s all I care to say further on the matter.”

“I _told_ you it would be a surprise.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale sighed, “and if nothing else, amphibians are known to be just that.”

“It could’ve been worse.” Crowley grinned. “You might have got the eye.”

Aziraphale stifled a vicious cough with the back of his hand. “ _Enough_.”

“All right,” Crowley said, and raised an amiable palm. “As you like.”

Before the angel was able to formulate an appropriately biting response, a fair young man approached them. “I say, sir,” he said to Crowley, his graceful, French-laced English darkened by drink. He wore a peascod-bellied doublet, canions, and silk stockings; the various tools of an apothecarial herbalist hung about his waist. “You have had an extraordinary effect on the Sultan tonight. My master and I were lately speaking to him about the glorious gardens, and it was clear his majesty could not but break his gaze from your person.”

“What?” Crowley managed.

“Yes, yes,” the man continued. “It is the grandeur of your dress, I think. The rhythm of your step and your striking countenance... Well, he has singled you out as an object of particular attention. Particular interest to the court, much like his beloved _lale_. They are mystical and mysterious. Do you see? He thought you were not a man at all.”

Crowley narrowed his eyes; a fierce flush rose to his cheeks. “Not a man?” he said slowly. “What did he mean?”

The Frenchman laughed and rested a hand on Crowley’s shoulder, glancing between Crowley and Aziraphale with glazed eyes as would an errant child who sought approval. “Oh, sir,” he tittered on, his own blush deepening. “Why, you must understand: the Sultan said you were not a man, but rather a woman dressed in man’s clothes.” He beamed eagerly. “It is far from a salubrious observation, good sir, but I think it is nothing lose one’s head over!”

Crowley exhaled heavily, and his lips twitched in momentary relief.

Aziraphale’s smile was the broadest of all.

\------------------

The cobbled streets of Amsterdam were laced with recent rain.

Aziraphale had to take care as not to slip; he knew he ought not to have worn his heeled shoes -- dictates of fashion be damned -- and the ebony cane was only vaguely helpful in steadying his stride. One must _practice_ , the little Piccadilly tailor chirped one sunny afternoon seven weeks before, but he was certain practice had rather little to do with it.

He examined the hastily scrawled-upon slip of paper that Crowley had given him the evening before, glanced up to the grey townhouse which loomed before him, and back to the paper. Yes, it was the right number, and the house had all the familiar markings round its perimeter: long, lingering flowerbeds in the front and a wrought iron gate which no doubt led to the gentleman’s well-kempt garden behind. A series of bright, blue-faced tiles wound towards the first floor windows on either side of the door, and the glowering lion on the knocker held not a heavy hoop in its mouth, but rather a bowed arc of new blooms.

Crowley assured him it would be quite an ordinary house, but the angel had been offhandedly expecting it to have some external marking which might shed light on its interior vice, be it a menacing flicker of heat from within, creaking locks and groaning shutters, a wolf in the walls, or perhaps, if one was feeling most regrettably unlucky, an undead doorman.

Of course, one did not simply walk up to an establishment which so burst at its stony seams with a history of sinister dealings without feeling a certain trickle of trepidation within one’s blood, and after Aziraphale left Crowley’s hotel room at a little after one, he had spent the hours until dawn wondering what sort of ghastly phenomena would be hidden within the depths of this house of ten thousand tulips.

Aziraphale took a deep breath, pocketed the paper, and swung the knocker against its brass plate. “Hullo?”

“Yes?” came a dry voice as the door swung open. To Aziraphale’s chagrin, the doorman appeared to be much like other doormen he had encountered over the millennia: high-browed and thin-lipped and ill-tempered for lack of a holiday. “Yes, sir? May I help you?”

“Er.” Aziraphale squared his shoulders and looked him in the eye. “I am here to see your master,” he said. “Pieter van Garrett. Is he at home?”

“He is,” the doorman said, glancing up and down Aziraphale’s form appraisingly. “Are you expected?”

“Good. I should very much like to speak to him.”

“Are you expected, sir?” he asked again, his lips twisting into a leer.

“Yes, of course.” Aziraphale peered behind the doorman’s shoulder, and wondered whether Crowley had yet arrived. “I’m here for the poetry reading,” he added sullenly, after a moment.

“Ah. The poetry reading.” The doorman took a step closer. “Of course.”

Aziraphale allowed a second servant to lead him through the house’s winding corridors, in and out of the den and the parlor, down a flight of stairs and up another, and finally into a wide room which stank of stale pipe tobacco and dry earth.

There were no less than a dozen other people present, each in varying states of casual negligence, though many of them seemed content to ignore the grand spaciousness of the room as they orbited about a slender, finely dressed man of about twenty-five. His feathered cap rested upon his head at a jaunty angle, and his doublet was unlaced near the top as to exaggerate the shadowed hollow of his throat. He nodded feverishly and laughed at a nearby man’s dirty joke; his cheeks were flushed with wine and apprehension. He appeared suddenly and unaccountably fresh, wide-eyed as though no one in the world had yet placed his mark upon him.

“That’s him,” whispered a voice by his side. And then, louder: “I thought you’d had a change of heart, angel.”

“And why’s that particularly?” Aziraphale asked, and stepped closer to the wall upon which Crowley had fixed himself. “Really, my dear boy. I told you I would come.”

“You were late, is all.” Crowley shrugged and handed Aziraphale a glass. “I expect they’ll be beginning soon.”

“Yes.”

A hush fell upon the room and negotiations began.

Would the young sir be willing to pay fifteen thousand florins for a single bulb of Semper Augustus? He shook his head: no. The businessmen smiled and held it before him in a mahogany box; would he care to see it? Once again, no, for it had not even yet sprouted or been breasted with green. But the businessmen insisted, and when Pieter van Garrett stroked its surface, his hand was a pale bony thing, weightless, like a featherless bird.

“He’ll pay eleven,” said Crowley.

“Shh.” Aziraphale tilted his head and strained to hear.

Did the young sir still wish to woo a maiden of Amsterdam? He did. Well, the businessmen coaxed, he must then be prepared to sacrifice a great deal. A very great deal. Her father would no doubt be a man of principles, a man of taste. The young sir must needs realize there are few greater pleasures to the heart than the Augustus abloom, and few things as secure in stature as a tulip.

“The market can’t hold out, not with prices as they are,” Aziraphale murmured. He felt a pinch in his stomach; the clock on the wall struck six. He did not even know van Garrett, had never seen him before this night. “It simply can’t.”

“And it won’t,” Crowley said, simply. “The lot of it will have imploded by the end of the year.” He finished his wine and turned to the window, though by then van Garrett had agreed to the pay sum of eleven thousand and fifty florins; it was enough to buy a townhouse in a fashionable district of the city, complete with a gentleman’s garden and several strapping horses. He would have his bride, one of the businessmen said, and pushed his ruddy palm into the young man’s. Van Garrett’s eyes glinted in the half-light.

“I wonder whether he’ll pickle it or sugar it,” Crowley chuckled.

“Sugar it?”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right, though from what I hear, even the choicest bulbs burn a bit going down.”

“He won’t recover. When things begin to collapse about him, he’ll give himself up to some ghastly merchant vessel in the West Indies and never be heard from again. You can see that, can’t you?”

“It happens.”

“You’ve got to learn to be nicer,” Aziraphale said soberly, after a long moment. “I don’t believe you’d find it impossible.”

\------------------

And after all the weather could not have been better.

Aziraphale understood how the gopher must have felt when it rose to find the morning sun in a streak of warmth across its face, and looked up to see there was not a cloud in the sky. Perhaps such a sight was something utterly new, something so completely unexpected as to instill a sense of sublime wonderment from furry tip to wagging tail. Or perhaps it was something well-remembered and oft-hearkened to: the bygone fancy of a faded era.

Who wouldn’t have felt a might peckish at the touch of the breeze, the kiss of the air against the brow? Vitality came to glint in even the blackest of black button eyes.

The gopher, Aziraphale supposed, had rooted through the line of freshly-tilled soil in the hope of finding something delicious to munch on. That it should have come upon and gobbled up each and every one of his prize tulip bulbs was utterly lacking in the element of sinful originality, and such things were usually reserved to amusing double entendres and children’s stories.

Aziraphale, however, was not amused.

“A gopher?” Crowley laughed. “In London?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said dryly.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. What else could it have been?”

Crowley considered this. “A rather desperate vicar,” he said, after a moment. “Or the superfluous son of a country squire, all alone in the great big city, in love with his reflection and afraid of his own shadow, and dashedly susceptible to corruption. You know the sort. An anemic -- _hence_ the soil fixation -- who thinks himself a poetic.”

“This is serious. I paid nine guineas for _each_ of them.”

“For unbroken reds? You paid too much,” Crowley said, “and you might as well wait until the end of the season rather than waste time recouping your losses now.”

“ _Crowley_.”

“Right.” A pause. “How many were there altogether?”

“Twenty-five.”

“But surely _one_ gopher couldn’t have eaten twenty-five bulbs in one go.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Perhaps it was very hungry?”

“No,” Crowley said. “Which is why I stand by my theory regarding the vicar.”

“Really, my dear. Will you help me?”

“I _did_ come all the way out here, did I not?”

“I thought you said you just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“I did,” Crowley asserted, appearing pointedly taken aback that Aziraphale might suppose it could be otherwise. “And I was. Look, if you’re quite content to vanquish said fiend on your own, I suggest you do so. There are more interesting things for me to be doing, you know, and not everyone can retain the leisurely hours of a private business owner. Then again, we might just as easily--”

“Wait,” Aziraphale said, and raised a hand to Crowley’s shoulder. It was not a movement sprung from unease, nor was it wrought by grief. He waited for Crowley to shrug it off, his breath held in a curious knot within his throat, and it was only after Crowley made no indication to do so that he entreated, “Go on. Please.”

“All right.” Crowley took a long step forward. He seemed to mull over his words, his fists held to his sides as he surveyed the dark, rich stretch of earth which lay before him. “First, you have to identify the prob--”

“It’s a gopher.”

Beneath the gloom cast by the wide brim of his hat, Crowley’s eyes narrowed.

“Sorry,” Aziraphale trilled. “You were saying?”

“Identify the problem,” Crowley said, “and then move on from there. If it’s a gopher you’re after, you’ll want to lure it out into the open.”

“And then?”

“Invite it to tea,” came Crowley’s mirthless chuckle. “Inquire after the missus. Read it a bloody bedtime story, for all I care. Just discover its _natural enemies_.”

“Ah. But what if it hasn’t any natural enemies?” Aziraphale asked, feeling all the more reasonable for it. The sun had begun to warm his own cheeks, and the breeze rustled the fine strands of hair which fell about his temples. “One might be struck down by a coach-and-four, I suppose, but oughtn’t a gopher to be small enough to slip amidst the hooves and axels unnoticed?”

Crowley blinked. “Yes,” he said, with great difficulty.

“Or perhaps it has an aversion to egg and olive sandwiches.”

“Come again?”

“Exactly. After trying them once -- almost certainly by accident, and never mind the extravagance -- any creature of decent sense will take precaution enough to avoid _that_ sort of thing,” Aziraphale said hurriedly. “Butter and cress varieties are quite preferable.”

Crowley cleared his throat. “Do you _have_ any sandwiches?”

“Naturally not--”

“Well, why bother mentioning it, then?”

“--Not made, at least. But my cupboard is bursting with all the finest fixings, you know. I went round to the market just this morning, and _then_ to the shops for raspberry jam and lemon tarts.”

Crowley smiled. “Raspberry jam?”

And so they had tea.

“Of course you’re quite right,” Aziraphale said between bites some minutes later. His voice was laced with the sort of introspective languor that can only be found after the consumption of a variety of sweet meats and spiced pastries, and as he carefully wiped the tips of his fingers with a napkin, he continued, “My word, but I only wish I had thought of it sooner.”

Crowley could hardly argue this point.

When the angel’s tulips began to sprout en masse the following morning, their green shoots shone the brighter against the misty cast of the sky, for they had thought themselves lost. And at any rate, it was quite a preferable scenario to frittering one’s remaining breaths away within the digestive tract of a rather paunchy rodent.

The gopher, on the other hand, was most distraught in finding itself to be an uninvited, uninitiated member of the Teetering Bough Gentleman’s Club. Its elder cousin and grandfather, although already present among the assorted beasts which lined the walls and ledges in what was a decidedly haphazard array of decadence, were not wont to acknowledge its presence. The stocking-clad legs and blindingly buckled feet shuffled forward and back across the polished wooden floor, and any attempts at flight between oaken tables and leather, brass-buttoned chairs, and finally towards the door would have almost certainly raised an eyebrow or two.

Its belly fully of brandy and wayward morsels of dusty beefsteak, the gopher would instead come to realize the importance of universal manhood suffrage and the inalienable rights of creature-kind, and planned to carry forth with this Revolution business shortly after breakfast.

\------------------

“What the people want is hyacinths,” Aziraphale said, aghast. “ _Hyacinths_.”

“So?” Crowley shrugged. “Grow hyacinths, then. I don’t see a problem.”

“It’s the principle of the thing, my dear. The papers say tulips are too French, and that one must uphold a sense of decorum in one’s gardening practices. Can you imagine? Grow hyacinths, bluebells, daffodils, they command, but be quite sure to leave the tulip bulbs to hang on in quiet desperation from the rubbish pile.”

“I thought you liked daffodils.”

“Of course I like daffodils. _Everyone_ likes daffodils.”

A pause. “Not everyone.”

“All right,” Aziraphale sighed. “But why ought a flower to suffer such injustice?”

“England is at war,” said Crowley, matter-of-factly. “With France.”

“Tulips cannot be bound to a single nation.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised.”

Aziraphale shook his head and pushed his hands into the velvet folds of his cloak. He had received quite enough surprises for one day: the night before, his boots managed to coerce themselves too close to the hearth -- never mind the fact that he had been out with Crowley until the dawn -- and the scent of scorched leather rather tainted his morning tea; the fine little coffeehouse down the way was closed due to political infestation; the intricately carved silver snuffbox he ordered in lieu of a Christmas present for himself had been sold to someone the baffled shopkeeper could only recall as being “a peculiar young man with very fine cheekbones.”

Also: his newest order of books from the Continent was being retained by a herd of wholly unappreciative Customs officials. For more than three hours, he and Crowley had been queued up to speak with someone who may or may not have been able to shed a bit more light on the situation.

“Next!” cried the stalwart man who was perched behind the counter. “Next, please!”

“That’s you, angel,” Crowley said.

“Pardon?” Aziraphale frowned. “ _Oh_. Hello, sir. I’ve come about my--”

“Have you the proper form?” the man drawled.

“Form, form.” Aziraphale began to pat down his pockets, top to bottom and bottom to top, until a flabbergasted folio announced its presence from beneath the silken stitch of his waistcoat. He smiled tautly and set it to the counter. “Ah. Here we are.”

“In triplicate.”

Two more folios appeared in the wake of the first. “Of course,” Aziraphale said.

“Excellent.” The little man eyed Crowley with some suspicion before he pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose and began to thumb through the paperwork. “What can we do for you today, sir?”

“My books have been seized.”

“Books.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “More than two dozen of them.”

“I see.” The man reached for a quill, dipped it in ink, and made several indecipherable notations in a large, leather-bound accounting book. He glanced up at Aziraphale, a succinct smile curling his lips. “And where were these books from, Mr.--” he paused to check the signature “--Mr. Fell.”

“Oh. Burgundy,” Aziraphale said, straining to maintain a casual tone. “And Avignon. Several from Paris.”

 

“France.”

“Yes.”

“I see,” he said again, and made another scrawl. “Well, we have been ordered to toss anything of _that_ nature into the river. A filthy business, but one must adapt to the times.”

Aziraphale blanched. “The Thames?”

“Would you have preferred the sea at Dover, sir?” The man arched a brow. “If so, do feel free to fill out the appropriate form that we might make such an adjustment in the future.”

“I’ll _not_ be filling out another form, thank you.”

“In triplicate.”

“That is blasphemy,” Aziraphale managed.

“I suppose so, sir,” he said, and absent-mindedly adjusted his powdered wig. “But there are those who believe the parchment will serve the aquatic life forms a treat. Humanitarian types, mostly. You understand, sir.”

“I cannot abide such absurdity, such wanton _disregard_ for knowledge. I cannot--”

Crowley tugged lightly on Aziraphale’s sleeve. “It’s not worth it,” he said.

“Not _worth_ it?” Aziraphale stammered. “How can you say that? You must realize how much they...”

“Sir?” The little man was still smiling. “Is there anything else we can do for you today? Perhaps you would like to apply for a fishing permit?”

“Oh! You have done _quite_ enough.” Against his better judgment, Aziraphale allowed Crowley to lead him away from the counter.

“Very good, sir!” the clerk called after him. “Do not hesitate to come back to see us again soon for all your pertinent inquiries. Next!”

When they were outside once more, Aziraphale mumbled, “The nerve. The absolute nerve.”

“I told you we ought to have cut to the beginning of the queue,” Crowley said, and shook his head.

“Really, my dear. This is hardly an appropriate moment to worry after the passage of time. They’re _defiling books_.”

“Well,” Crowley continued, after a moment. “Perhaps if we found out where that chap lives, and then turn his mangy excuse for a first son into a--”

“No.”

“Well, we could see his horse into a cabbage, then.”

“Come,” Aziraphale said dejectedly, and held his arms across his chest to ward off the mid-December chill. He felt his stomach rumble. “Perhaps we might have lunch.”

“I say!” thrummed a sudden voice to their side. Its owner was young and well-dressed, almost dandyish and handsome, but his long hair was tangled in greasy knots and his head lolled as though the neck had been oddly twisted about. He stepped closer, his teeth bared in a grin. “Had a bit of trouble in there, did you? They are very particular about to whom they will speak frankly. You were not able to acquire your books, yes?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed cautiously. “What a barbarous age it is we live in that one is not allowed the right to obtain even the most benign of texts.”

“I suppose they were French,” the young man laughed acridly, and dashed a long, pale hand across his brow. “Very dangerous, very costly.”

“They were certainly far less dangerous than the ill-will which caused them to be thrown into the river.”

“Oh? And the topics were scandalous, yes? Books of philosophy? Of poetry?”

Aziraphale ignored the low sound of Crowley’s laughter. “If you must know,” he said firmly, “they were floral catalogues.”

“Floral catalogues,” the man repeated musingly. The broad curl of his smile wrinkled the tender, tired flesh about his eyes. “Ah, of course. Flowers. I might have known.”

“Good,” Aziraphale said. “Now, if you’ll be so kind as to excuse us, my friend and I must be going. The day grows old, and we have more pressing matters to attend to.”

“So soon? Oh, sir, but I have not yet told you of my own _collection_.”

“I’m sure I can imagine--”

“I think not.” The young man’s fervent eyes darted between Aziraphale and Crowley, down the street and back. When he spoke again, his voice was naught but a whisper. “I think you would be most impressed to see it. Most _eager_ , sir.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat sternly, but felt his resistance fade as with the ebbing of the tide. “What is it about your collection which so sets it apart from others?”

“I have come by many rare volumes in my travels abroad.”

“And how did you manage to bring them into the country?”

“It was less than sorcery, my good sir, but not by so very great a margin,” he said. “No, one must be resilient, and I have my ways.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale turned to Crowley, who had begun to root through his pockets out of boredom or curiosity or both. “What do you think?” he whispered.

“I think he’s quite mad,” Crowley replied frankly, his voice loud enough to be heard by someone twenty feet away. He did not fail to meet the young man’s gaze. “Didn’t I hear you mention something about lunch?”

“Lunch can wait. This sounds like a rather good opportunity,” Aziraphale coaxed. “It may be quite some time before I’ll be able to find those books again.”

“What makes you so sure he won’t try to sell you a bunch of imitations? Or better yet, perhaps you ought to just give him your purse outright so he won’t be forced to fret over how best to steal it.”

“Nonsense.” Aziraphale folded his hands before him and returned the young bookseller’s smile. “Where do you keep shop?”

“Oh, I have no shop, sir,” he said, and his voice was laced by something other than wistful regret. “I am but a humble enthusiast, which means little here nor there, though I have a most bountiful cart.”

“A cart.”

“Yes.” He nodded, pointing vaguely over Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Not far, not far from here.”

In fact, the cart waited all alone in an alleyway several serpentine streets away. It was painted a dull sort of red, and the wheels’ wooden spokes were buckled with age. In the dim, dank light, it seemed to take on a life of its own: that of a hulking beast or an aged goblin which grew more impatient for the taste of human blood with every passing hour. Aziraphale felt a shiver circuit down his spine.

The man, in turn, threw open the canopy as would a freshly-recruited magician who was all too eager to perform well, but in his haste comes to reveal the hidden hare in the nook of his sleeve. He sorted through various stacks and twined parcels, mumbling beneath his breath, and at last retrieved a large volume wrapped in brown paper.

“This, sir,” he said, and handed it to Aziraphale. “This is what you seek.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale savored the mighty heft of it in his hands, taking a deep breath before sliding a practiced finger beneath the fastenings to loosen the paper.

 _Traité Compendieux des Tulipes_ , proclaimed its embellished spine.

It was bound in dark, rich leather, and the pages were of a thick grade. Within, there was _T. agenensis_ , its yellow pigment petals feathered with red, and the sexual system of _T. didieri_ with its grey-violet stripes. There were _T. sylvestris_ and _T. praecox_ , those broken and unbroken, tawny and speckled, varied early-risers and somber late-blooms, the Marquetrines and the Fantasticks.

In life, such tulips would have funded a king’s baccarat habit; indoctrinated and presented as dowries, they might break the heart of any who gazed upon them.

“Yes,” the young man said, gauging Aziraphale’s reaction. “I knew you would like it, sir. I have never seen such a variety as this volume proves is in existence, but they are very beautiful, very true to form, are they not?”

Aziraphale nodded, and continued to look through the book; Crowley was close to his side. Every now and then his sight would linger on a particular drawing: the Roman’s Spear and Semper Augusts, Admiral van Horn and the Viceroy. “How much?” the angel managed, after a long moment.

“For a text as difficult to come by as this? Oh, I do not think I could not let it go for less than fifty pounds.”

“Fifty pounds?” Aziraphale started. “That’s highway robbery.”

“Well.” With a gravelly chuckle, the bookkeeper slipped the volume out of Aziraphale’s grasp. “I think it is the going rate.”

“By what estimation?”

“That is not a reasonable question, sir.”

“Oh, but it...” Aziraphale bit his lip. “I’ll give you twenty pounds.”

“Forty-five,” said the young man.

Fifteen minutes later, that was the very price which Aziraphale paid. He felt rather sea-sick; his hands trembled lightly, and he hugged the book against his chest so they would not show. The tulips, he hoped, would steady him. “It will be a lovely addition to have,” he told Crowley as they made their way back to Soho.

Crowley snorted. “The way you were emptying your pockets of every bit of coinage, I’m surprised you didn’t snatch up the assortment of French postcards he tried to throw in at the last minute. A few of the young Hyacinthuses were actually good looking, which is more than I can say for some of those sodding tulips you’re so enamored of.”

“Oh, no. They were hardly something that mightn’t be procured at a decent stationary shop,” Aziraphale said, quickening his pace. “Besides which, the cardstock was of a quite inferior sort of pulp, and the dye appeared rather faded. Not worth twopence, if you ask me.”

\------------------

In the spring of forty-five, Aziraphale joined a floral society.

It began simply enough, no more and no less than a patient way to pass the time: each morning, he took a moment away from managing his shop to check the contents of his window boxes, watered them, and saw that there was not a malevolently-minded insect to be found therein. Every other afternoon he scanned through the most bombastic of the weekly trade articles, jotting notes in a tidy journal. Here etched on black and white plates were the Earl of Wednesday’s prize pink chrysanthemums and Miss Portia Featherstonehaugh of Bexhill-upon-Sea’s new variety of tea rose, and there stood a topic which bridged the classical attributes of medicinal botany to the latest trends in competitive gardening.

On the days when it rained, Aziraphale took heed that his plants were not drowned, and on the days when the sun beat down upon the land, he did not allow them to be seared.

He grew polyanthuses and auriculas, double red ranunculuses and wide-browed pansies.

He also grew tulips.

Like other growers, he made an April pilgrimage to a prominent garden, and after a healthy serving of champagne and plovers’ eggs he was rightly awed by so great a collection in bloom; the flowers’ shades were as numerous as the stars. He paid his bi-annual dues and attended a conference on bulb planting in November; other members quarreled over the importance of placement and wondered after the possibility of splicing two bulbs together that the colors might merge and grow and reach newfound magnificence. Many were interested in profit and trade, and made little effort to disguise this fact but for the deep-rooted excitement which sprung up as a glint in their eyes at the first sight of a new flower. They examined petals beneath microscopes and marveled at the cells’ order and simplicity. They lectured and longed for yet finer specimens.

Aziraphale, meanwhile, listened very carefully to the way in which a grower could heighten his tulips’ enthusiasm for display. One might augment one’s natural abilities.

There were strict grids to create and guidelines to follow. Angle the bed in such a way as to encourage sweet trickles of moisture and discourage sleek, menacing slugs, said one. Recite poems to ward off canker and stimulate embryos, urged another. Fit misbehaving blooms with thin cotton corsets and string them with silk that they might better understand the importance of proper shape. Avoid direct sunlight or direct shade; erect wooden frames and plan the progress of garden paths. Visit local nurseries avidly and often. Never willingly submit to the whims of fashion. Scoff at inferior bulbs, at those too young to yet have been given a name.

It was rather a lot to take in all at once, even for Aziraphale, and not least of all because each claim took great care in refuting another.

Northern admirers imagined that Southern ones were too gentle and wily in their methods, and were therefore not to be trusted during competitions; Southern aficionados thought themselves agriculturally infallible, and wrote many books on the subject. A consensus between them was years in the making.

Each tulip was expected to be no less than three feet in height; the stem ought to be firm, but malleable, and of good weight and texture. Floral connoisseurs and gentlemen of leisure alike preached the wonder of symmetrical petals. Bright colors were obliged.

In the spring of fifty-one, the angel entered a show at Islington.

It was a well-publicized occasion, and the gossip in the streets was laced with the promise of surprise. Ninety-five societal members displayed their proud tulips, and three hundred more were in attendance. They strolled along the isles, alternately admired and gawked at each flower, and jangled their purses with the brisk regularity of the round watches in their pockets.

Aziraphale was not nervous.

When the judges came round to his station, they peered long and hard at his burgundy-crested Byloemen. They measured its diameter and navigated its depths, whispering to each other and making discerning sounds with their teeth and tongues. The stamen rose forth as a peal of pitch. The cupped white bloom was as close to a half-sphere as could be attained, and the dashes of pigment which ran along its central veins gave the appearance of blood spilled upon an encapsulated length of fresh snow.

It is well, fellow fanciers said, and a wonder. How had he bred such a flower? What were its origins? Where had he acquired the seed, and would it really be so inherently different from its parents? Aziraphale could not answer with certainty, for he believed he had merely bestowed upon it easy sympathy and care. He told them so.

The men’s curiosity was piqued.

How much would he sell it for, they prompted. Fifty pounds? Seventy-five?

But Aziraphale did not wish to sell it. He felt a niggling murmur in his bones which said: perhaps one ought to wait that Crowley might see. It drowned out the other twinge, the one which wondered whether Crowley would ever be bothered to take interest in that sort of thing, but only just so.

They went away, no less interested than when they first gazed upon it in earnest, no less incensed by Aziraphale’s failure to yield. It was odd to them that a novice grower should find such success with an early bloom, and so they were apt to attribute it to beginner’s luck.

The judges eventually deemed the Right Honorable Quentin Millet’s unbroken salmon-pink doozy to be the best in show; it was, after all, quite a lovely variety. He was awarded the cursory sum of five pounds, which was considerably less than what he had rewarded them for their attention a week before, as well as a year’s subscription to _Floricultural Magazine_.

Aziraphale won fourth place, but declined the opportunity to be mentioned in _The Times_.

His next tulips were a deep, flamed purple, the closest shade to black possible; the ones after that were yellow flushed with red. The shoots were late in coming, and when they bloomed, he couldn’t tell where one color ended and the other began.

\------------------

“Picture, if you will, a change in the weather.”

“What sort of change?”

“Oh.” Aziraphale set the bottle to the table with care and determination; there was little sense in making a mate for the crimson splotch on the carpet which Crowley’s overturned glass had seen to some minutes before. He took a deep breath. “Quite an awful sort, I imagine.”

“Rain?”

“Yes, rain. And great ribbons of violet lightning.”

“Well.” Crowley paused, concentrating on the swirl of the wine in his glass. “I can taste the lightning, and perhaps even an early frost, but not rain. I think you muddled up your glasses. That was the last one.”

“I didn’t,” Aziraphale said earnestly, and dashed his tongue across his lips. “What about... Oh. A shy gazelle drinking by a mountain stream?”

“A flute by still water.”

“A flute made of a mountain reed?”

“Of leaves.”

Aziraphale smiled. “Or the nearsighted lion of the midlands.”

“The last unicorn.”

“The end of the world.”

“Yes,” Crowley said. “It’s like that.”

And it was, rather.

The day began quietly enough: breakfast and a walk through the park, marmalade on thin, crisp toast and a twopence tulip from a pretty nurse’s tray. They even fed the ducks, just as they had done with a bewildered sort of regularity in the month which rose from the astral pangs of the near-apocalypse.

But then again, perhaps it was to do with Aziraphale’s tickets for the Wagner matinee; it took astonishingly little effort on his part for Crowley to agree to come along. Perhaps it was also to do with the fact that Crowley had not been able to sleep for weeks, or so he said, though he looked quite well in his tuxedo and silk scarf, and he came round with the Bentley at very nearly the time Aziraphale asked him to. The angel could not help but smile upon hearing the familiar, evenhanded jangle of the door; he brought his opera glasses and folded himself into the passenger seat.

“You’re sure you’d not like to stop somewhere before the show?” Aziraphale had asked, knowing the spectacular sort of havoc that _Götterdämmerung_ was capable of reaping on a sober mind.

“I thought you hated missing overtures.” Crowley did not look away from the road; his knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

“Well, yes.”

They arrived on time and took their seats; it was not until after more than an hour’s worth of dueling egos and clashing falsettos that Aziraphale noticed Crowley had nodded off. The nerve of some people, he began to think, but then he saw the angle in which Crowley’s cheek was cradled by his shoulder, and the way his palm rested open in repose atop his knees.

Aziraphale reached out and touched it, lingering lightly. It was cool and dry, and the skin was soft. When he pulled away, Crowley’s eyes had opened. He watched Aziraphale with the kind of bleary interest which seeps the moments between waking and dreaming.

Aziraphale’s lips twitched; Crowley folded his arms across his chest and looked away.

The houselights brightened for the first intermission, and they waited for the rows around them to clear before they stood and trailed into the lobby. Aziraphale rather fancied a flute of champagne, saying as much and pushing his hands in his pockets, but Crowley shook his head.

“I’ve a few bottles of wine at my flat, you know,” he commented with a shrug, and Aziraphale understood that he was in fact referring to the fantastic multitude of fine vintages which occupied an ample closet. All it took to call them forth was a focused shard of belief. “I thought we might--”

“Yes, let’s.”

And so it was there that they remained in the coming hours.

Crowley’s immaculate leather sofa seemed to grow more comfortable after each successive glass, and as the clocks struck twelve it equated to something not unlike the most enticing place in the hemisphere upon which to rest one’s bones. Indeed, Aziraphale soon realized that getting up would have been a physical impossibility.

Crowley’s arm was stretched along the back of the sofa, and he sipped his wine thoughtfully. “Fact,” he said.

“He _didn’t_ say _that_ ,” Aziraphale countered. “He couldn’t have done.”

“He did,” Crowley said, and again: “Everything beautiful is ssslightly lopsided. Pretty good, eh? I certainly thought so at the time.”

“ _Well_.” Aziraphale narrowed his eyes, considering the ruddy, solitary form of the nurse’s tulip on the chimney piece. Standing straight in its sterile glass vase, it seemed suddenly absurd: a luminescent fragment from some other world. But the room was lit only by a single shaded lamp. The tulip would be dead by week’s end. It had been grown in a hothouse, and was utterly without scent; its petals formed a perfect half-globe. Aziraphale continued softly, “He was _mistaken_ , of course. It’s utter nonsense, never mind the average eighteenth century cottage or country estate.”

And never mind the uneven curl of Crowley’s mouth as he went on, “He was ambitious.”

“Self-serving, more like.”

“Yeah.”

“And I suppose he was tight.”

“Not _really_ , not then, but I never thought he would keep at it.”

“Well it jolly well serves you right.” They were silent for a moment before Aziraphale said with careful clarity, “Don’t let’s forget the sort of turncoat he eventually showed himself to be.”

Crowley shrugged and said quietly, “It happens.”

Aziraphale looked at him then, at the smooth shadow beneath his eyes and the flush of his lips. His hair was tousled, the dark wisps of his fringe pushed back from his brow, and Aziraphale suddenly wanted to say something which would be understood.

Yes, the one day they had been so waiting for had come and gone, and they were still here. One might have seen the object of mixed passion in the ease of memory. One might have guessed.

One possessed of lesser concern might offer consolation with a fragrant floral bouquet, he thought, or write a note on stiff Victorian stationary.

Instead, he set his hand atop Crowley’s; he did not pull it swiftly away as he had done at the theatre. It was still quite soft, but also warmer than before, and insistent all of a sudden as Crowley’s fingers curled about his own.

“My dear?” Aziraphale asked, waiting for Crowley to meet his eye.

“Hmm?”

“May I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Crowley said around the edge of his glass.

“Do you think it odd?”

“Do I think what odd?”

“That things should have turned out as they did.”

“Oh,” Crowley said. “I suppose I’ve not dwelt on it.”

Aziraphale had been dwelling on little else, and he suspected that Crowley was caught in the sway of a similar loadstone. “But you _do_ think it’s odd, don’t you?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“I daresay,” Aziraphale replied. When he moved in closer, he reasoned that to do otherwise would have been out of the question. Crowley’s collar was unbuttoned, his scarf and tie long discarded, and the triangle of flesh between his throat and his shirt seemed paler for the faded light. His breath was calm and easy; Aziraphale’s came unsteadily, and later, he said, “But mightn’t one be glad to know one’s made a difference?”

Crowley didn’t answer, but when he rose to retrieve the fifth bottle of wine from the table, Aziraphale followed him.


End file.
